(Oh how it disturbs me to put a post about an XBOX 360 title somewhere other than the "modern" section, but...)
So, the
Capcom Essentials collection for XBOX 360 and PS3... Well, of course it exists, I'm holding the damn thing now. Or rather, I'm holding something similar but not quite what was advertised, anyway. Here's
the current VGCollect page for it. (PS - If any mods see this, I just updated that entry with back-of-box text and scans of my alternate cover, back cover and the discs but I'm not sure if it actually went through or not. If no, let me know and I'll try redoing it, think it might have screwed up since I forgot to resize one of the images to a less-huge filesize.)
Okay, so it looks simple enough - shovelware compilation of five semi-recent hits (at the time it was announced). Nothing too special there, plenty of companies do it. There's even a "Capcom 30th Anniversary" logo on the back, which probably explains the logic behind its release in the first place. But notice how the stock cover photo currently being used here and on most every other website that lists it includes
Resident Evil 6? Yeah, well, not my copy. Nor any others that I've seen come up for sale. Here's what mine looks like:
(Nevermind the dual-language thing for now...)
(The guts. No instruction manuals are included, but links to PDF files housed on the Capcom website are provided. Oh, and I've never seen the standard retail discs for these games - are these just them exactly or is the artwork differed somehow? I'm assuming it was just leftover stock being cleared away, but it seems like most times companies like to make the discs in such collections at least slightly branded to the new product...)
So at first I thought maybe it was initially shipped with some copies of
RE6 and it was just all bundled together in a slipcover that matches that stock image that's being seen everywhere or something like that. Makes sense for it to be somehow packaged separately in a bigger box or something anyway, as that would explain the UPC being replaced by that big NOT FOR RESALE text that you normally see only on pack-ins or other promos.
..But if it's as simple as that, why does nobody seem to be selling it still bundled with
RE6? Or with anything else at all? The copies on eBay are just using the stock images again, or they're like mine - no
RE6 to be found. Furthermore, why would Capcom decide to give
RE6 its own separate case but then tack these other four on as just a freebie bonus anyway? I mean, it's not like these are exactly slouch games in the name-value or quality departments themselves, and certainly a good case could be made for
SF and
MM being far bigger/more notable titles than even
Resident Evil is. Why just cram 'em into a single piddly Ecobox with no included manuals and all the dignity of a $5 budget title but give RE6 the royal treatment? And
even if they'd done that, you'd think that
RE would likely still be mentioned
somehow,
somewhere on the
Essentials packaging. A blurb within the copyright information or such. But nope, not a trace. Weird.
Well, so what about the copies you can buy right now? Just head to the store and grab a new, shrinkwrapped copy for yourself and check it out, why not? Well, 'cause you're not likely to find it at one, best I can tell - not a regular retail store, anyhow. See,
here's GameStop's page for the PS3 version. Man, this explains everything! It came with a slipcover
and it was all snuggled up inside a groovy pouch!
But dammit, they're out of stock... And so is every other major retailer's site. Were they ever
in stock? Amazon has 'em, yeah, but they're sold through a third party. "New" copies are on eBay, but again, it's not really "known" vendors and most all of them use those stock images again; and several "new" copies are just sealed examples of the discs like mine that make no mention of
RE. And the used copies? (Well, the ones with that provide actual listings instead of yet more stock photos/descriptions...) Yep, you guessed it - no
Res Evil, no bitchin' travel pouch, no slipcover.
So what the hell happened? Its lack of availability at major retailers isn't too strange, it was released nearly three years ago, after all. Plus it coulda been a limited edition thing that just sold out... but if that was the case, why do the "new" copies that turn up all seem to come from the kind of places who are more likely to be found trying to unload 75 copies of
Dog The Bounty Hunter Kinect Krusades or something than they are dealing with sold-out successes. So here's my unfounded, poorly-researched guesses:
A). The release was cancelled, for all "real" intents and purposes, very,
very shortly before its scheduled release date. Perhaps the
RE bundles never even made it to market, or did so only in miniscule numbers, and the remainder of whatever amount of stock was produced with the new "Essentials" packaging before the cancellation decision was finalized was simply sold off wholesale to exactly the kind of overstock/discontinued specialists who tend to sell the ones that are around.
B). People friggin' LOVE
Resident Evil 6 so very much that they paid extra for the fancy version with the bonus games just so they could literally turn around and get rid of the non-
RE games before they even played them in an effort to prove their devotion to the series. Nobody who bought the package was ever able to bring themselves to sell off
Resident Evil 6 or even the slipcase, given how it's the only other part of the package that makes reference to
RE. Also they really like that pouch too, I guess.
C). The release was an utter failure, with consumers nationwide preferring to buy these titles at full retail or nothing at all. Copies hit the cutout bins as soon as they could be be pressed and it was banished to the land of wind and ghosts so quickly and carelessly that nobody even bothered to see if they were including the RE discs or the Capcom pouches with every copy or not - they just wanted it gone!
D). Canada! Hey, remember how my copy's got French text all pollutin' up that elaborate artwork? The US release was botched for some reason, but it wound up getting released there. Maybe. No evidence to really point to that besides the doublespeak on my copy though, and it still wouldn't explain the overall lack of information about this release and seeming absence of copies still bearing their Resident fruits. FWIW, my copy was found this past December at a thrift store in southwest Missouri, so it's a little far from its presumably-Canada-bound home whatever the case may be. They had two copies, and I bought both and gave the other to a friend. It's not a store that's known to carry any kind of regular game selection at all, so I was surprised to find them (and half-surprised I'd never seen or heard of this particular bundling before). Neither copy was sealed, but if not for the lack of shrinkwrap, they appeared new in every other way. Seemingly un-touched discs in pristine, shiny new cases. They even still had the
Mega Man 10 DLC cards...
E). I'm an idiot who got high and thought far too much about some half-assed, barely-noticed-by-anyone footnote in Capcom history that probably has no bigger story behind its existence than "Well sir, me and Jimmy found a bunch of copies of these five games out in Warehouse 48 last night and we knew you wanted it cleaned out but
Resident Evil was the only one that had any boxes printed. We didn't want to just waste the other ones though, so we thought it'd be alright if we just stuck 'em all in one case and printed a new cover for 'em. Only problem was we didn't quite account on there not bein' enough of the zombie one to go around, so I guess we screwed up. Sorry. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot, we also found some of them little pouches we had made up for givin' out at the big company picnic we had back around '04. Earl, you remember that one, right?"
I'm going with "E" myself.
But seriously, does anyone have a complete-for-sure copy of this or remember seeing them on store shelves? I'm fairly confident that the PS3 version (including RE6) is out there for sure, as there are at least a couple for sale on eBay with "real" pictures (ie, not the stock photo) that show the presence of both the RE6 art on the cover as well as the actual disc itself. The Capcom pouch is still MIA, however. That said, I've still been unable to locate an Xbox example of the same. Only two of the 360 versions currently on eBay are using "actual" non-stock photos, and both of them are the same as mine, right down to the English/French text combo. (And I noticed both were being sold by Americans.)
One last thing - I was quite annoyed that the
MM10 download code in mine didn't work. Hell, maybe more surprised than annoyed, really. As I said, the discs in both my copy and the one I got for my buddy looked like they'd never been off their spindles since they left the factory, so I wasn't expecting that anyone would have redeemed the codes (his didn't work either). Looking at it now, I notice the actual code is "exposed," and it seems like most other games I've had that included similar DLC cards had the numbers covered with that scratch-off silvery junk lottery tickets have. I wonder what you call that stuff. Anyway, I dunno on that one, maybe not every company does that. OR!! Maybe the production was halted before that final step could even be applied, and the codes didn't work because they'd never even been activated on MS's servers in the first place since the title they'd be packaged with now wasn't "really" being released anyhow. But hell, now that I think about it, is it just because I'm in the U.S. trying to redeem a code intended for Canadian purchase?
So yeah, how's that for an introductory post?! Hi everybody! I've got another "What the hell is this?" post almost as dumb as this one coming soon, too!
